Was ICON Creative Studio hit by ransomware?

ICON Creative Studio was listed by the Metaencryptor ransomware operation (Canada), and stolen data was published on the group's leak site. Darkfield tracks this disclosure with the original leak post, screenshot and group context.

Who is the Metaencryptor ransomware group?

Metaencryptor is a ransomware operator tracked by Darkfield. See the full operator dossier for its known victims, sectors targeted, IOCs and leak-site infrastructure.

What data was leaked in the ICON Creative Studio breach?

Metaencryptor published data attributed to ICON Creative Studio. Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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ICON Creative Studio

Claimed by Metaencryptor · listed 3 years ago

$410M

Ransom

demanded

35m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedAug 16, 2023
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Metaencryptor
Status: Data leaked
Country: Canada
Sector: Media
Listed on leak site: Aug 16, 2023
Ransom demanded: $410M
Estimated revenue: $410M

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

ICON Creative Studio is Canada's largest independently owned CG animation studio, located in the Gastown district of Vancouver, BC. The studio employs over 950 creatives spanning design, storyboarding, modeling, rigging, animation, lighting, visual effects, and compositing. Its client roster includes major IP holders such as Disney, Warner Bros., and Clash of Clans, producing feature films, series, theme park attractions, and more.

Industry: CG Animation & Visual Effects Production
Address: Gastown district, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Employees: 950

Attack summary

Severity: high — Data has been published by the threat actor, confirming exfiltration and disclosure of significant business data from a large studio with major entertainment-industry clients; while no explicit regulated PII at scale is confirmed, the published data from a 950-employee studio with high-profile client work represents a significant breach.

Metaencryptor claims to have attacked ICON Creative Studio and has published data (disclosed status: data_published); the leak post cites the company's reported revenue of $410M but does not separately specify a ransom demand distinct from that figure. No explicit data size was stated, but the data_published status indicates exfiltration and disclosure of company data.

high

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Internal company files
Creative/production assets
Employee records
Client project data
Financial/business records

What the group claims

ICON Creative Studio is Canada’s largest independently owned CG Animation Studio, located in the historic Gastown district of Vancouver, BC Canada, housing over 950 talented creatives ranging from design, storyboarding, modeling, rigging, animation, shot finaling, lighting, visual effects and compositing artists alongside creative and management teams.Revenue: $410M

Sources

Source

Indexed 3 years ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About Metaencryptor

Metaencryptor is a relatively new ransomware group that emerged in August 2023, operating with primarily financial motivations and targeting organizations across multiple sectors and geographical regions. The group appears to be an independent operation rather than a Ransomware-as-a-Service model, though limited public documentation makes definitive attribution challenging regarding their specific country of origin or connections to established cybercriminal networks. Based on their targeting patterns, Metaencryptor demonstrates a preference for manufacturing organizations, business services, and transportation/logistics companies, with their operations concentrated primarily in Western nations including Germany, the United States, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom. With 31 documented victims since their emergence, the group represents a moderate but persistent threat in the ransomware landscape. However, due to their recent emergence and relatively lower profile compared to major ransomware families, comprehensive technical analysis of their attack methodologies, encryption techniques, and specific initial access vectors has not been extensively documented by major cybersecurity firms or government agencies. The group's current operational status remains active as of available intelligence, though the limited public reporting suggests they operate with a smaller scale and lower visibility than prominent ransomware-as-a-service operations that typically attract more attention from law enforcement and security researchers. The group has been linked to 31 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on August 16, 2023; most recent post June 24, 2025. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

August 16, 2023ICON Creative Studio listed by Metaencryptoron the group's public leak site

Ransom demanded: $410M

Other recent disclosures by Metaencryptor

Metaencryptor has been linked to 31 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Metaencryptor dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Media sector, which has 54 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, ICON Creative Studio is reported in Canada, a country with 1,055 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Metaencryptor means ICON Creative Studio appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
Report the incident to your national CERT, CCCS (Canada), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Metaencryptor's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.